"Actor: Stephen Simms"

• Henry V | DVD | (17/06/2002) from £6.54   |  Saving you £3.45 (52.75%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Very few first-time film directors would have been capable of making such a triumphant adaptation of Henry V; but a still-youthful Kenneth Branagh's years of stage experience paid off handsomely and his 1989 version qualifies as a genuine masterpiece, the kind of film that comes along once in a decade. He eschews the theatricality of Laurence Olivier's stirring, fondly remembered 1945 adaptation to establish his own rules: Branagh plays it down and dirty, seeing the Bard's play through revisionist eyes, framing it as an anti-war story in contrast to Olivier's patriotic spectacle. Branagh gives us harsh close-ups of muddied, bloody men, and of himself as Henry, his hardened mouth and wilful eyes revealing much about the personal cost of war. Not that the director-star doesn't provide lighter moments: his scenes introducing the French Princess Katherine (Emma Thompson) trying to learn English quickly from her maid are delightful. What may be the crowning glory of Branagh's adaptation comes when the dazed leader wanders across the battlefield, not even sure who has won. As King Hal carries a dead boy (a young Christian Bale) over the hacked bodies of both the English and French, a panorama of blood and mud and death greet the viewer as Branagh opens up the scene and Patrick Doyle's rousing hymn "Non nobis, Domine" provides marvellous counterpoint (like the director, the composer was another filmic first-timer). A more potent expression of the price of victory could scarcely be imagined. --Rochelle O'Gorman, Amazon.com

• Maybe Baby | DVD | (24/09/2007) from £14.83   |  Saving you £1.16 (7.82%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Sam and Lucy Bell (Hugh Laurie Joely Richardson) are bright thirtysomething media darlings - he's a TV Commissioning Editor for the BBC she works in a theatrical agency - who seem to have the perfect life. More than anything Sam and Lucy want a baby and so they embark on a rigorous schedule of lovemaking dictated by ovulation charts rather than passion. Nothing appears to work. In desperation they deliver themselves into the hands of Dr. James (Rowan Atkinson) who suggests the possibility of IVF as the way forward. The endless medical tests soon take their toll on the couple's relationship. Sam vents his frustration by penning a screenplay based on his current predicament: a comedy about a couple trying for a baby. Meanwhile Lucy's hormones are all over the shop and she finds herself increasingly attracted to the star client at her agency suave and debonair actor Carl Phipps (James Purefoy).

• Maybe Baby | DVD | (15/01/2001) from £6.65   |  Saving you £7.34 (110.38%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Ben Elton adapts his own novel for the big screen in this comedy about a couple (Hugh Laurie and Joely Richardson) who become more & more desperate as they try to conceive a child.

• The Sherlock Holmes Catalogue - The Master Blackmailer | DVD | (28/04/2003) from £6.46   |  Saving you £3.53 (54.64%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The Master Blackmailer is a two-hour 1991 Granada TV adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's story The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, which for the most part sticks close to the details of the original. Holmes (Jeremy Brett) takes on the reputed king of all blackmailers, Milverton (Robert Hardy), who has made a fortune extorting money from the famous and the blue-blooded and who routinely ruins others' lives when not pleased. Unable to talk Milverton into turning over letters belonging to Lady Eva Brackenwell, Holmes decides to steal them, going undercover as a plumber and even romancing Milverton's housemaid, Agatha (Sophie Thompson), to gain better access in the house. (The ethical Watson, played by Edward Hardwicke, is upset to hear of Holmes's deception of an innocent woman.) The story builds to a surprisingly violent finale, but the real hook is Brett's performance as the disguised detective and the startling suggestion that Holmes's close contact with Agatha truly moved the bachelor sleuth. --Tom Keogh